The Island House Page 3

  She would absolutely miss James. He was a year younger and already six inches taller than her five foot eight. As a kid, he’d been a clown, a rascal. He’d just finished his senior year in high school. He’d done well—there was no doubt that he was smart—but he was restless. People said James was “too smart for his own good.” He got A’s in all his courses and did his homework in about two and a half minutes. Their mother had hired a computer whiz to teach James about computers; that kept him occupied for much of his free time. He played baseball and soccer and had plenty of friends, but still he seemed filled with a kind of irrepressible energy that drove him mentally as well as physically. One summer he announced that he was going to learn Japanese from an elderly man who had retired to the island. Robin had overheard her parents discussing this.

  “Ridiculous idea,” Dr. V had grumbled.

  Susanna had countered: “It’s perfect. Japanese is almost impossible to learn. Just what James needs to keep his brain busy.”

  So Robin worried about James, too, and because he was her younger brother, being away from him made her feel guilty in an illogical way. She never actually took care of him, but she watched him. She sort of monitored him. She didn’t want him to go through the craziness Henry did—as if she could control that!

  Her first year of college, she missed her Nantucket friends, too, the ones off at other colleges and the ones who remained working on the island. She missed her bedroom at home. She missed the huge, rambling, sun-filled rooms of her home. Every day she thought of the island, its mists and gales, its expanse of moorland and secret coves, its plunging hawks and sweet-eyed seals. She missed the arrogant splendor of the sea. She knew she had to go to college, but it felt like something she had to endure.

  Courtney changed all that. Courtney was fun and silly and intelligent and good-hearted. When snotty, ultra-reserved Eastern girls ridiculed Courtney for her twangy accent and called her a hick, Courtney just tossed her sleek mane of dark hair and ignored them. When Robin felt comfortable enough with her to ask her if the other girls’ snobbery didn’t bother her, Courtney answered with a shrug, “Oh, I was expecting much worse than this. I prepared myself for coming East. Whenever I get insulted, I make myself conjure up my horse and the feeling of riding her bareback and I feel just fine.”

  Robin might not have made it through her first year of college if not for Courtney. The classes were challenging, and the teachers were so intense about their subjects that Robin felt like some kind of lower life form because she didn’t want to become president of the United States or the scientist who cured cancer. Her grades were mediocre and she spent a great deal of time alone in her room. It amused her that she got the reputation for being aloof and stuck-up. Courtney fell in with a group of super-bright English majors and brought Robin into that group. Often when that gang went into Northampton to the movies or a restaurant or went to Mount Tom for an all-day hike, Courtney insisted that Robin join them. Gradually and halfheartedly and in spite of herself, Robin began to feel at home.

  By spring, Robin and Courtney were best friends. Robin invited Courtney home for a long weekend, hoping to lure her to the island for the summer. Susanna loved having people in the house. The more the merrier! During that first long Easter vacation weekend when Robin brought Courtney to the island, Henry was in Boston and James in Washington, DC, on a class trip, so Courtney didn’t see the Vickerey family in all its normal nutty glory, and Robin was glad. Certainly she’d warned Courtney about her charming, disruptive, clever, whirlwind brothers. Courtney had said she couldn’t wait to meet them, but Robin had worried. From all Courtney had told her, she came from a calm, stable family. If she ever saw the dark side of Henry, Courtney might get freaked out.

  But that spring vacation was perfect. Even the weather cooperated. Usually it could be dreary on the island in April, with low gray skies and bitter winds. That April the sun blazed from a robin’s-egg blue sky, and the seas were deceptively calm. They biked into town together and checked out the shops and restaurants with HELP WANTED signs. When Courtney heard how much these places paid, she called her parents to say she wanted to work here in the summer.

  Robin worried all over again the last day of their freshman year. If only, she thought, if only Henry could be his normal wonderful self for the first few days of Courtney’s stay, so Courtney could get to know the real Henry. For the past three years, ever since Henry had had his first episode, his moods had gone up and down as the psychiatrists tried to find the right fit of meds to keep Henry stable. Robin had told Courtney about this, but not in all its terrifying detail. She really wanted Courtney to spend the summer with them, and she didn’t want to scare her friend away.

  That year, when the dorms emptied and Robin and Courtney were all packed up, they caught a ride from Northampton down to Hyannis to catch a ferry. Robin’s mother met the girls at the dock, helped them pack their luggage into the back of the minivan, and told them how happy she was to see them both. She chatted away cheerfully, asking the girls about their courses, and Robin saw no telltale sign of worry on her mother’s face, heard no tension in her voice. Maybe things were okay, she thought. Maybe Henry was all right.

  Her mother pulled into the driveway of their house. The front door opened and Henry came out. Robin held her breath. Then Valerie stepped out behind him, and Robin gave a sigh of relief. Usually if Valerie was with Henry, things were all right.

  “Hey, baby rabbit,” Henry called, coming down the slate path to the car. He was six three, whip thin, with red hair, large green eyes, and horn-rimmed glasses.

  “Hey, guys.” Valerie, possessed of a mellow personality, hung back, satisfied to give them all a wave. She was a hair short of six feet tall, thin, with blue eyes and blond hair worn short—she was athletic like Henry and headed to med school, too. “Look at you, you big old college girl.” He wrapped Robin in a warm hug, and she hugged him back, savoring her big brother at his best.

  “Who’s this beauty?” Henry asked when Courtney stepped out of the car. “Mom told us she was a looker, but wow. The island will never be the same.”

  Courtney blushed.

  Valerie thumped Henry on the shoulder. “Cut it out. You’re embarrassing her.” She held out her hand to Courtney. “Hi. I’m Valerie Whitman, Henry’s friend.”

  “Friend?” Henry asked. “Don’t listen to her, Courtney. Valerie’s the love of my life, and she knows it. She likes to downplay it to make me keep reminding her.”

  Maybe Henry is a bit manic, Robin thought, biting her lip, but he opened the back hatch, lifted out their suitcases, and carried them into the house and up the stairs. Maybe, Robin thought, Henry is simply happy. He and Valerie had both been admitted to Harvard Medical School. They deserved their sunny moods.

  That summer everything was perfect, or as perfect as a house could be with a thousand people coming and going. Robin’s younger brother, James, had just graduated from high school. He and his sexy wacko friend Christabel spent most of their days working for the Department of Public Works, going around the island picking up trash on the beaches and sidewalks. It was their community service handed down by a judge for the idiotic prank they’d pulled that spring. Often Christabel and her divorced father, Quinn, came for dinner. Robin’s younger sister, Iris, was still a kid, twelve years old and carefree. Henry and Valerie were like twins joined at the hip. Together they volunteered at the hospital and quizzed each other on anatomy, preparing for med school. Every evening they went for long runs and on Sundays they took the kayak over to Coatue and back. Friends of Henry and Robin and James came for a week or two to enjoy the island, and Robin and Courtney gladly helped Susanna cook for the suntanned, laughing, salty-mouthed mob.

  Robin spent the summer volunteering at the Maria Mitchell aquarium. Most of her days involved patiently teaching visiting children about the small creatures in the touch tank. The best days she got to collect specimens as she snorkeled around the inner harbor. She wasn’t making any money, but she didn’t need money. She was seriously in love with the island and the water around it. She didn’t know where this passion would lead her, but she was ready to follow. When she wasn’t working, she was racing around buying groceries for the circus at home, and in her free time, she and Courtney ran down the steps to the beach and swam. As for men? She couldn’t be bothered. College guys did not show off their best selves at the all-day, all-night, deafening-rock, drink-till-you-puke beach parties. Besides, Courtney worked so hard that summer, by night she had no desire to do anything but collapse.

  The great thing was Henry. He remained stable, cheerful, on track. At the end of the summer, he and Valerie even treated Courtney and Robin to dinner at Topper’s. He engaged Courtney in a heated discussion about literature and doctors, insisting Emma Bovary’s husband was a much maligned doctor, and suggested Courtney read the works of Walker Percy. Courtney glowed from his intelligent attention.

  Robin was grateful for Henry’s beguiling charm that evening, although an envious gremlin at the back of her mind was jealous that Courtney admired Henry so much. You should see him when his meds aren’t working, she wanted to say. You have no idea how much time I’ve spent trying to talk him down or cheer him up!

  But that was mean-hearted of her, and she honestly hoped Courtney would come back to the island next summer, so she shut off the gremlin in the back of her mind and pretended to be totally fascinated by Valerie’s excitement over what she’d read about some newly FDA-approved antibiotics. Valerie was as clueless as Henry when it came to mixing dinner conversation with appropriate topics. As Robin ate her delicate sea bass and nodded and umhummed to Valerie, she remembered the terrifying first time Henry had been in psychiatric trouble.

  Henry had been a sophomore at Harvard. All his classes were in advanced science and math. He was so far ahead of everyone that two of his professors were privately working with him on a paper in biology. Susanna stayed at home on the island with Robin, who was sixteen, James, who was fifteen, and Iris, who was only nine. Their father came to the island every weekend. During the week, he performed surgery at Mass General hospital, just across the Charles River from Harvard and yet, somehow, and not surprisingly, he never had time to visit his oldest son. Not that Henry wanted visitors. When Susanna and her daughters and James went up to Boston, they called Henry and offered to take him out to lunch or dinner. He was always too busy.

  The Friday before Thanksgiving vacation was to start on the island, the three kids were sitting at the kitchen table—the kitchen table Robin looked at now—while their mother leaned against the sink drinking coffee and supervising their breakfast. This had been almost fourteen years ago, and Susanna had still been as lithe as a girl. The phone had rung.

  “Your father!” Susanna guessed as she reached for the phone on the wall. They were not yet using cellphones, that’s how long ago it was.

  It was like a movement in a ballet. Susanna held the phone to her ear and pivoted and stretched to reach her coffee cup on the counter. Her face had been young and filled with light.

  In an instant, the light faded, the youth vanished, Susanna’s hand dropped away from the coffee cup, and she turned away from her other children to face the wall.

  It seemed to Robin a very long time before Susanna said, “I see.” She listened again to the voice on the other end of the phone. “No, Dr. Vickerey’s in Sweden. At a conference. He won’t be back until the weekend. But I’ll come.”

  Robin stood up. “Mom?”

  Her mother ignored her. Her fingers found a pencil on the small desk beneath a chalkboard used for lists. She wrote something on a pad of paper. She said, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  When she turned back to face her three children, it was as if, for just a moment, she had no idea who they were.

  Iris, oddly enough, was the one to offer helpful advice. “Mom. Take a deep breath.”

  Her words seemed to break the spell. Susanna actually took a deep breath. She flashed a smile at her youngest daughter. “Thank you, Iris. Children, that was Mass General hospital. Henry is—ill. He’s ingested a complicated mix of drugs—he’s okay now, physically. I need to go there right away.” But she didn’t move.

  Robin said, “I’ll go with you, Mom.”

  “Let me think. I need someone to stay home and take care of Iris.”

  Iris objected. “I can take care of myself!”

  James offered, “I’ll come with you, Mom.”

  Susanna studied James for a moment and all the children knew she was pondering the possibility that while she was gone, James would pull more adolescent stunts. Robin had always been the practical, reliable, sensible one. Everyone in the room knew this.

  “I think I need Robin with me,” Susanna said.

  So there it was: if Susanna needed Robin, the news about Henry was very bad. Her children were given a view of their mother they almost never saw, the face of a woman tormented with indecision, anxiety, and fear.

  “I need to leave as soon as possible. James, can I leave you in charge of the house and Iris?”

  “Sure.” The look he gave his mother was a guarantee of his best behavior.

  “Thank you,” Susanna said. To Robin, she said, “Get your purse and any extra money you have—we might need it for a cab. We can’t take time to stop at an ATM. Let’s go.”

  Robin gently pointed out: “Okay, Mom, but I’m dressed and you’re not.”

  Susanna didn’t even smile. She looked down at her body in its pajama bottoms and T-shirt as if she had never seen it before. “I’ll dress. Call the airport, reserve a flight on the next plane to Boston.”

  “Maybe we should pack in case we have to spend the night,” Robin suggested.

  Susanna blinked. Her jaw fell open. She looked completely helpless.

  “Mom.” James, who was already taller than his mother, gently urged her into a chair. “Drink some of your coffee. Tell us who that was who called. What did they say?”

  Obediently, Susanna sipped her coffee. “Dean Winters,” she said slowly. “He said Henry was found on the grounds of the university in the middle of the night, bleeding from a cut in his arm, and”—she tilted her head down, averting herself from the word she finally managed to whisper—“raving. Henry was raving. He was incoherent, inebriated, and probably full of drugs. They don’t yet know what kind. They don’t know where he got the drugs or alcohol from.”

  James made a noise. “Mom, it’s Cambridge. Anybody can get anything in that town if they want to.”

  “They tried to help him settle down…” Susanna’s eyes widened, filling with tears. She wrapped her arms around herself as if she’d suddenly caught a chill. “They had to—” A low moan gusted from her throat. “They had to put him on a stretcher in an ambulance. They strapped him down.”

  Iris burst into tears. Robin hurried to wrap consoling arms around her sister.

  “Hey.” James’s voice was calm but as powerful as their father’s. “Think of people hit in car accidents. Women who’ve fallen in the streets and broken their ankles. Everybody who goes in an ambulance gets strapped down. It’s no big deal.”

  Susanna lifted hopeful eyes to her second son. “Really?”

  “Really.” James wrapped an arm around his mother’s shoulders. “You’re doing it again, going straight for the worst-case scenario. Is that all they know? Is that all they told you?”

  Susanna nodded numbly.

  “Okay, well, maybe Henry had some LSD and is having a bad trip. Everyone tries LSD sooner or later.” Immediately, James said, “I haven’t. I won’t. I’m not saying Henry did. Maybe he just got shit-faced drunk.”

  It was almost more than Robin could bear—seeing her competent mother nearly paralyzed. She took charge. “Come on, Mom, let’s pack for overnight and get to the airport. James, make reservations now. Iris, make us each a bag of munchies for our purses. We don’t know when we’ll get the chance to eat.” Robin didn’t care about eating ever again in her life, but she knew it would relieve Iris to be part of the solution, not to stand helplessly watching.

  Robin followed her mother up to her room. Susanna looked around in confusion.

  “I don’t know what to wear. It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? They never covered this in motherhood manuals: What to wear to visit your son in the loony bin.” Susanna tried to laugh.

  On Nantucket, Susanna had developed a wardrobe much like all the island mothers who spent their days driving children to football games or play rehearsals. Jeans, a white button-down shirt, sneakers, an L.L.Bean vest. For going out to a casual event, jeans, a crisp white button-down shirt, and a Hermes scarf. Less casual: a cashmere sweater and pearls. Low-heeled shoes because of Nantucket’s cobblestoned streets.

  “Put on your navy wool suit with a white shirt,” Robin told her. “It’s almost Thanksgiving. It might be cold up there.” As she spoke, she dug out her mother’s Lilly Pulitzer duffel bag. Moving efficiently, she put in her mother’s pajamas, some clean underwear, a white T-shirt, and a colorful wool shawl. “Mom, get your toothbrush and face cream and stuff like that. I’m going to go to my room and change. I’ll be ready in five minutes.”

  As Robin and her mother waited at the airport for the next flight to Boston, they paced the floor together, unable to speak, caught in a helpless fluster of distress, like bees batting at a window screen.

  “I’ll phone home and see if anyone else has called with an update on Henry,” Robin said to her mother.

  “Oh, what a good idea. I’ll do it!” Susanna hurried off to the pay phones.

  For a moment, Robin was miffed. It was her idea after all. Yet she knew it would be helpful for Susanna to do something, anything. As if she could somehow be useful.

  Susanna came back. “Mass General called. Henry’s been transferred to McLean’s. And Jacob Barnes phoned. He’s Henry’s best friend. You remember him, he’s stayed here before. He was the one who alerted the campus health service about Henry. He’s driving out to McLean’s after his last class.”